HKB
[Sidenote: A tidal spring at Gades.]
There is a fountain in the Heracleum at Gades, the water of which is sweet and is reached by steps. This fountain has a tide which rises and falls exactly in the reverse order of the sea tide. When it is high tide at sea it is low tide in the fountain, and high in the fountain when it is low at sea. The explanation of this is that the wind, which rises from the bowels of the earth to the surface, is prevented from finding its natural egress when the earth is covered with water at the rise of the tide, and being thus turned back into the interior of the earth, it stops up the underground channels of the fountain and produces a deficiency of water; but when the earth is again uncovered, the wind having once more found an easy egress, sets the veins of the fountain free again, and the water spurts up freely....
[Sidenote: The process of producing silver in the mines near New Carthage.]
There are very large silver mines about twenty stades from New Carthage, extending to a circuit of four hundred stades, in which forty thousand men are continually employed, who produce for the benefit of the Roman people twenty-five thousand drachmae a day. It would take too long to describe the whole process of working them, but I may mention that the alluvial soil containing the silver ore is first broken up, and sifted in sieves held in water; that then the deposit is again broken, and being again filtered with running water, is broken a third time. This is done five times; the fifth deposit is smelted, and, the lead having been run off, pure silver remains....
[Sidenote: The Guadiana and Guadalquivir.]
The Anas and Baetis both flow from Celtiberia, their streams being about nine hundred stades apart....
Among other cities of the Vaccaei and Celtiberians are Segesama and Intercatia....
[Sidenote: Homer, Odyss. 8, 248.]
One of the Iberian kings had such a magnificent and richly furnished palace, that he rivalled the luxury of the Phaeacians, except that the vessels standing in the interior of the house, though made of gold and silver, were full of barley-wine....
[Sidenote: River Aude. The Tech and the Ruscino or Tet.]
[Sidenote: A mistake of Timaeus as to the Rhone.]
+10.+ From the Pyrenees to the river Narbo the country is flat; and through it flow the Illeberis and Ruscinus, past some cities of the same name inhabited by Celts. In this plain there are found what are called underground fish. The soil is light, and produces a quantity of grass called agrostis; and below this soil the earth is sandy for a depth of two or three cubits, through which the overflow of the river percolates; and with this water, as it makes its way, the fish also get below the soil to feed, for they are exceedingly fond of the root of the agrostis, and have thus made the whole plain full of subterranean fish, which people dig up and take....
The Rhone has not five, but two mouths....
[Sidenote: The Loire between Poitou and Nantes. Coiron.]
[Sidenote: Britain is quite unknown to the southern Gauls.]
The Liger discharges itself between the Pictŏnes and Namnitae. There was in ancient times an emporium on this river called Corbilo, but none of its inhabitants, nor those of Massalia or Narbo, could give Scipio[225] any information worth mentioning on the subject of Britain when questioned by him, though they were the most important cities in that part of the country; and yet Pytheas has ventured on all those stories about it....
[Sidenote: The Elk.]
An animal is produced on the Alps of a peculiar form; its shape is that of a stag except its neck and coat, which resemble that of a he-goat. Beneath its chin it has an excrescence about a span long, hairy at the end, about as thick as a colt’s tail....
[Sidenote: A gold mine near Aquileia.]